Arbitration in family cases: another way

• The time for arbitration to play a bigger role in family proceedings has come.

Family practitioners (and their clients) are all too aware of the current crisis in the family court. At the Jersey International Family Law Conference last month, President of the Family Division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, concluded his speech by acknowledging that ‘the Family Court is not currently in a good place’ adding that ‘the substantial backlog that existed before the pandemic has now grown very substantially’. The 14% increase in the number of new cases started in the family court during the second quarter of this year, following a 7% rise in the first quarter, has done nothing to help alleviate this substantial backlog.

As well as those directly involved in family proceedings, the crisis has also attracted the attention of the Lord Chancellor, who is apparently now drawing up plans to impose penalties on parents deemed to be ‘clogging up’